83%

83% could mean a lot of things.

1) It could mean the percentage in which my brain has been functioning this week.

2) It could mean the amount of Luke's waking hours that he has spent at the St. Vincent ICU this week on the night shift.

3) It could mean the grade I got in World History in High School.

4) It could mean the percent of a chance that I will just forego my fast food boycott and make my way to Dairy Queen to get a Chocolate Extreme Blizzard right. this very. second.

Actually...it means none of those.

It means that 83% of Noelle's first year of life is behind her. Yes, she's 10 months old. And yes, even though I teach 4th grade and fractions to percentages and all that good stuff, I definitely plugged it into the calculator on my Mac's dashboard just to make sure that 10/12 is 83%.

This has been a crazy ass week, but I am going to give this post the respect it deserves by telling you that our little sweetie is well on her way to her 1st birthday, and I am excited and sad all the same. I am trying to think of a way to type all of this out without sounding like the most cliched mommy you have ever heard...which means I will avoid phrases like time is "just passing before my eyes," and "she is growing like a weed," and "she is changing before my eyes"...even though all of which are true.

What I will say is that Noelle has approximately 4 and 2/3's teeth. Three full teeth on the bottom, one full fang on the top, and 1/3 of two other teeth are poking through on the top, too. She is starting to look less like a baby and more like a little girl. She still crinkles her nose when she smiles, makes the most adorable sound when she laughs (think of what an overweight chipmunk might sound like if it were to laugh out loud...), and she freaking loves it when Luke tosses her up in the air.

She says a lot of sounds, such as dada, mama, gaga, and she will say "geehceyatt," which is baby language for cat! She loves the cats and will look around the room if you say, "Noelle, where's the kitty cat?" She also calls Ernie "dada," so she is either really confused or...really confused.

Noelle walks behind her shopping cart on her own. She pulls up to stand, cruises down the couch, waves, and claps occasionally. Unfortunately, I caught her clapping during Mitch Daniels's State of the State address a couple nights ago. She didn't quite understand that we don't clap for that man in our house.

We believe Noelle to be a bit on the short side for her age. Her 9 month pants hang off of her at the bottom, and we have to roll them up so she can practice walking. She is still in size 3 diapers, she is mostly on baby food and some table food, though she still loves her 2 1/2 bottles a day.

Last night, I really thought she was going to crawl. She was starting to do a bear crawl type of thing, and she would get on all 4s and rock back and forth. As soon as I got the video camera out, she stopped.

Luke has worked nights all week, meaning that he goes in to the hospital around 5 and gets home around 7-7:30 in the morning. This all adds up to not a lot of time with us together. Approximately 20-30 minutes each day. However, due to the amount of snow we received this week, my school has been on a delay for 2 days and released early one day. This has allowed us to see Luke a little more than we would have normally.

I got my first "your baby is sick and you need to come get her" call today. I think I have done pretty well to make it 10 months without one of those. Noelle has had an upset tummy for the past couple of days, and today it was REALLY upset because she had a blowout so epic that it exploded out of her clothes and spewed "water" onto the floor at daycare. Icky. I had to take her to the doctor today to get a note saying Noelle could go back. As much as I didn't want to leave school in the middle of the day, I really enjoyed being able to spend some extra time with the baby girl.

So, in a nutshell, Noelle is the epitome of awesomeness and I love her more each day. Her personality is really starting to show, and I find myself looking forward to each new day, anxiously awaiting her next development or change.

And....here's her 10 month teddy bear picture!